Crowdsourcing ideas for unused science

摘要

The Royal Society of Chemistry has teamed up with an Oxford University spin-out to sponsor six challenges on Marblar - a radical new online platform for finding applications for unused scientific discoveries. More than 95% of technologies developed in universities never make it to market, leaving publicly or philanthropy-funded research collecting dust on the shelf. Often, given that academic research can be well ahead of its time, the commercial relevance of these technologies is not immediately obvious.